


Necrosis

by sinaddict



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-22
Updated: 2005-10-22
Packaged: 2017-10-08 22:24:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/80110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinaddict/pseuds/sinaddict
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death in bits and pieces, denial as a religion... Or 'normal' in Neptune.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Necrosis

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through 2x04.

**I.**   
_If everything is just the way it should be,  
why am I, why am I still hungry?  
\-- "Be Like Water" by Sarah Fimm_

  
Duncan has an excuse.

It's a pretty damn good one as far as excuses go. "Your dad murdered my sister." Kind of hard for Logan to come up with a response to that one. He could probably stretch his excuse to include, "Your dad took advantage of my sister." Lilly was a beautiful, naive, _innocent_... okay, so he couldn't even mentally get through that without laughing.

But he could add, "You spiked my drink at a party, you did body shots off my nearly-totally incapacitated girlfriend, and you've been acting like a jackass for the last two years and expecting me to clean up your messes."

Duncan's got some pretty damn good excuses. Too bad they don't mean shit.

_"I hate him, too, you know."_

That soft, broken admission has been looping in Duncan's head for hours, and he hasn't been this pissed off about anything all summer. He's been fine with Logan acting like an asshole; he sure as hell never felt guilty about shutting Logan out when Logan was constantly taunting him about his relationship with Veronica.

Then Logan had to go and ruin it.

The jackass.

He sees Veronica peeling out of Logan's driveway as soon as he turns onto the street, and he thinks he should be upset or jealous or something. He trusts Veronica completely, he does, but it's not for the reasons he should. He trusts her so completely because he knows her well enough to know she won't fool around with somebody she's so incredibly angry with.

Normal. Veronica wants normal now, and Logan will never be normal.

He wonders what it says about him that everybody's willing to believe that he is normal.

Logan answers the door and rolls his eyes. "Your girlfriend just left."

Duncan reopens the cuts on his knuckles with Logan's face.

"Oh, this _again_?"

"Shut. Up," Duncan says through clenched teeth as he shakes his hand out and ignores the pain, glaring down at the guy who was supposed to be his best friend. "You want to get on me about not being around this summer? Huh? Well, where the hell were you when everyone convinced me that _I_ killed Lilly? You were off screwing around with my girlfriend!"

"She was your ex-girlfriend."

"Christ," Duncan shakes his head and starts back toward his car. "Why do I fucking bother?"

He's opening the car door when he hears a hesitant, "Duncan... wait." He turns and finds Logan sitting on the ground with his head in his hands, and against his better judgement, he finds himself walking back, dropping to the ground wearily next to Logan. And he still feels guilty enough that he should be considering offering an olive branch, but he just can't bring himself to actually do it.

"All the evidence she had," Logan finally says without looking at him. "I thought maybe you did. Kill Lilly."

"I did too until she told me she thought _you_ did it," Duncan replies. Almost as an afterthought, he says softly, "I guess we were never as good of friends as we thought we were."

And he didn't say it to be cruel, but the look that crossed Logan's face... He doesn't know what to say to fix it. He could lie, take it back, pretend to be _normal_ about it, and those words are on the tip of his tongue, but he can't let them go.

"If it wasn't for you, I would've never met her."

Logan's voice was barely a breath above a whisper, and it takes Duncan a minute to process it. "Veronica?"

"Lilly."

"If you hadn't met her, she wouldn't be dead. Everything's a fucking 'if'," he says bitterly, looking away from Logan. "If she wasn't such a--" he catches himself, exhaling sharply. "If our parents had just... None of it really matters."

And there's nothing left but silence between them.

  
*

  
Veronica should've known better.

Really, she _did_ know better. It's not like she ever fooled herself into thinking Logan might appreciate a warning about his impending beatdown at the hands of an enraged husband -- he was dumb enough to start fucking Kendall Casablancas in the first place, she figures he pretty much knew the consequences going in.

And she hates herself a little for not letting it go at that.

If she had just let it go, just stuck to the _normal_ plan, she wouldn't know.

Now she does.

All those people... they're all dead because she couldn't let Lilly go, either, and she wishes she could hate Lilly a little for that, too. If Lilly hadn't been so... _Lilly_, she'd still be alive and there never would've been a Mars Investigations. And Veronica would've always been _normal_.

Staring at a poster for 'The Long Haul' and _knowing_, she still couldn't hate Lilly.

But god, does she hate herself.

"They're all dead because of me," she feels her voice break, and when Duncan pulls her into his arms, she thinks this should be comforting her. There used to be a time when anything seemed better with Duncan's arms around her, a time when murder was something that just happened in movies.

(She hates that she knows that time is gone.)

Duncan kisses the top of her head chastely, murmuring vague reassurances about how it's all okay, and a little part of her thinks that nothing's ever going to be okay again. "You don't understand," she tells him, pushing him away slightly. "The bus crash, it was _my_ fault."

And there's a millisecond where Duncan's expression is totally unreadable before he smoothes it over with soft concern. (He's so much better at normal than she is. How the hell did _that_ happen?) "Veronica, you're not making any sense."

The story sounds far-fetched and a little egotistical when it tumbles out, even to her. "He's behind this. He was trying to kill me, and the only reason he didn't was Lilly--"

She cuts herself off abruptly, but it's too late.

"Lilly?" Duncan asks, an edge to his voice that she hasn't heard in months. "What about Lilly?"

She really doesn't know what to say that doesn't sound like an obvious lie. Well, what doesn't sound like a lie and doesn't make her sound like she's finally having the nervous breakdown that's been on its way for months. "Would you please focus?" she changes the subject. "I'm the reason Meg's in a coma she might not come out of. I'm the reason Jesse's little brother is going to grow up thinking his dad's a murderer. It's _my_ fault."

"For Christ's sake, Veronica, would you stop it?" Duncan snaps, raking a hand through his hair, and her mouth drops open in shock. "If Aaron Echolls is responsible, if it were anyone else he was trying to get rid of, would you be standing there telling that person it was all their fault?"

She rolls her eyes and starts to answer, but he cuts her off abruptly. "You want to play the 'if' game? Fine, let's play the 'if' game!" Duncan gestures emphatically when he's really angry, and she hasn't seen him like this since that night he found her taking apart Lilly's air vents.

He isn't _normal_ like this.

"If it weren't for you, Aaron Echolls wouldn't be in prison," he ticks off on his fingers as he starts to pace. "Okay? Yeah, maybe that means there wouldn't have been a bus crash, but it would also mean that he got away with killing Lilly. You think that's better?"

And she hates him a little for doing this. "No," she answers flatly.

But he keeps going. "If he got away with killing Lilly, Abel Koontz would still be rotting away on death row for something he didn't do because my parents would still be convinced _I_ killed her. You and I would've never ended up back together; who knows, maybe I'd still think--"

He stops himself before he says the words.

(They don't talk about _that_. It's not _normal_.)

"You don't get it," she says, exhaling sharply as she turns away from him. "I don't know why I thought you would."

"Fine, I give up," he catches her elbow as she heads for the door. "What do you want to hear? Tell me what to say and I'll say it, Veronica."

He pulls her around to face him, and her fingers clench around fistfuls of his shirt as she drags him closer, kissing him, and it's as far from sweet and gentle as she can possibly get, but it's still better than anything that's come before it.

Duncan presses her back against the wall, his hands sliding under her clothes, touching bare skin wherever he can find it, and somehow the fact he can get her clothes off without ever moving his mouth from hers seems more helpful than anything he's ever said to comfort her.

Their (second) first time was sweet and gentle and everything she'd imagined when she first started dating him years ago, but this is like something she'd see in an Angelina Jolie movie. The back of her knees hit the edge of the bed, and she doesn't even remember moving from the wall. Duncan's hands are cupping her face, sliding back to tangle in her hair as crawls on top of her, slides inside of her, and her whole world is suddenly nothing but Duncan Kane.

And right now, that doesn't seem like such a bad thing.

  
*

  
_"Psst... Hey, Veronica!"_

Veronica opens her eyes slowly and flinches back when she finds Lilly's face hovering in front of hers. Lilly smirks as she leans back. "Boo."

Rolling her eyes, Veronica starts to sit up and finds Duncan's arms still wrapped around her. Glancing back at Duncan's sleeping form, she raises an eyebrow at Lilly, who brightly asks, "So... how was the sex?"

Veronica eases out of Duncan's embrace, holding the sheet over her chest and looking at Lilly expectantly. "Oh, like you have anything I haven't seen before," Lilly rolls her eyes, but still walks around the room gathering up Veronica's clothes. "For someone who just did the things you two did without blushing, you're being a total prude about letting me see you naked."

Sliding on her clothes silently, Veronica carefully edges away from the bed and pads toward the bathroom, gesturing to Lilly to follow. With the door closed behind them, she whispers harshly, "I am so pissed at you right now."

Lilly looks entirely unconcerned as she leans over the sink and touches her bleeding head wound with a wince. "God, Veronica, how about a 'thanks' for saving your life?"

"How about a 'why not tell me what you were doing so I could save everybody else's'?"

"Gee, 'cause I didn't care?" Lilly looks at Veronica's reflection in the mirror like that should have been obvious. "Really, Veronica, I could've let you die with the rest of them. We would _so_ rule the ghost world together."

"Why didn't you?"

Lilly gives her an exasperated look as she turns around. "You worked so hard to find out who really killed me. I owed you one. Besides, eventually when you get bored with my brother, it'll pay to have Weevil on your side. He does this thing with his tongue that is--"

"Lilly!"

"What? You got bored with Logan and he's not bad with his tongue, either," Lilly dismisses. "So, is Duncan really that much better in bed? I mean, from what I saw, and _heard_, he seemed to really know what he was doing."

"That was..." Veronica trails off, exhaling. "Yeah, he definitely knows what he's doing. When he's angry."

"Ooh, trouble in paradise?"

"Yeah," Veronica folds her arms over her chest and glares at Lilly. "See, he doesn't get that six people are dead because of me. Well, really because of _you_."

"Wow," Lilly studies her. "You're really getting that whole martyr act down. Do guys find that a turn-on?"

And Veronica turns on her heel and leaves without bothering to say goodbye to Duncan.

**II.**   
_Buried in here somewhere is the reason.  
Maybe I don’t care enough to find it…  
Forgive this hole that is my heart that’s had enough.  
\-- "Wrong Side Up" by Sarah Fimm_

  
Duncan answers the door to his suite at the Neptune Grand in nothing but a towel.

"I bet the room-service girls _love_ you," Logan smirks, leaning against the doorway. Duncan rolls his eyes, shakes his head, and walks back into the room, leaving the door open behind him, and Logan will never _ever_ admit he might've been a little worried about whether or not Duncan would slam the door in his face.

Sauntering in, Logan takes in the rumpled sheets and scattered clothing with a raised eyebrow and the slightest pang in his heart. "Am I interrupting?"

"No," Duncan says shortly, disappearing into the bathroom. "What are you doing here?"

And the fact that Logan doesn't really have an answer to that should seem like a bigger deal.

He shrugs as a half-dressed Duncan comes back out, idly flipping open the books on the table and glancing at the contents without actually absorbing anything he's seeing. There's a moment here where it's like last year, Logan thinks, when Duncan just nods and starts looking for a clean shirt without pressing the issue.

Like they're still friends and it's normal for Logan to drop by without any real reason.

Duncan makes himself comfortable on the bed and points the remote control at the television. "Game highlights are on ESPN2."

"Yeah," Logan nods, flopping down next to Duncan and trying not to think about what probably happened on the rumpled sheets before he got there. And it's a bit of a toss up at the moment whether it's because the thought would be too painful or a turn-on. (Logan's always had an overactive imagination.)

They watch the highlights mostly in silence, with the occasional, "You idiot!" or "What are you doing?!" directed at the television like the players could actually hear their comments.

It's almost like this summer never even happened.

Logan can't decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

  
*

  
"Jesus H., Veronica Mars, you've got the two hottest guys in Neptune falling all over you, and it's really _never_ occurred to you to play with them both?"

"I don't _want_ them both," Veronica snaps back, thoroughly annoyed that Lilly's following her around and refusing to let the issue go. "I just want to be normal."

"Normal?" Lilly's laughter rings out through the apartment, echoing off the walls. "Oh, come on. You have to know, Veronica, don't you? You can't be normal. You're too far gone from it now. It's like saying you're going to be innocent again."

Veronica ignores her.

Lilly sighs as she paces, running her fingers over the countertops and managing to make it look sexy in a way that only Lilly could. "Stop fooling yourself. You could have them both, together... What do you think they'd be like? Would they make everything a competition, both of them touching you, kissing you, trying to outdo each other with who could get you off better?"

"Lilly," Veronica warns, and she is absolutely _not_ a little turned on at the picture Lilly's painting. (Lilly's always had a way with words, especially when she's talking about sex.) "Knock it off. I don't want them both. I don't want Logan."

"They're talking again, you know," Lilly naturally doesn't even consider knocking it off, lowering her voice just a shade, making it sound husky and sexy and probably just how she'd sound after sex, not that Veronica thinks about that _at all_, because that wouldn't be normal.

And Lilly's circling her now, close, but never close enough to actually touch, and Veronica thinks that maybe Lilly watched 'Animal Planet' to study just how the panthers and lions moved before pouncing on poor unsuspecting deer and antelopes. "Maybe they'd work together instead of competing... God, can't you just picture it? Duncan's mouth and Logan's hands... all that intense, broody, angsty energy focused on pleasing _you_\--"

"If you're so god damn fixated on fucking both of them, go talk them into it!"

A slow smile curves across Lilly's face. "Now you're talking."

Lilly's form flickers out like a candle, and all Veronica can think is, "Oh, crap."

She's definitely going to regret that. She's just not sure _how_, yet.

  
*

  
Falling asleep next to Logan is natural.

Duncan's been doing it for the better part of six years. For a long time in the middle, they were inseperable enough that permission from their parents stopped being necessary; if Duncan wasn't home, his parents assumed he was at Logan's. Logan's parents were almost never there, so they didn't question where Logan was spending his nights, even at thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.

Falling asleep next to Logan is natural.

Waking up with Logan pressed against him is also oddly natural, even after the last five months.

Logan's managed to push them both to the very edge of the bed, and Duncan wonders if his girlfriend ever woke up like this, hanging halfway off the side of the bed with Logan's arms snaked around her so tightly it almost hurts to breathe. He wonders if she'd be fully dressed like he is, if she'd mind Logan's hands drifting under her shirt, Logan's fingers dipping beneath the waistband of her pants. He wonders how she'd react, if she'd push Logan away or if she'd arch into his touch the way she arches into Duncan's.

The way Duncan arches into Logan's.

(They're more of a circle than a triangle, Duncan thinks. Two-thirds is never enough.)

And while Duncan's imagining all the things Logan might've done with Veronica, Logan's fingers are deftly undoing the button on his jeans, and when exactly Logan woke up, he's not sure, but he doesn't really care. Then Logan's sliding his hand inside, and Duncan thinks he should feel guilty about this, should think of it as a betrayal of his girlfriend's trust (if she trusts him at all, which depends on what day it is and what mood she's in and what color the sky is in her normal world), but this feels right, whole, and he won't feel guilty about that.

He's got enough shit to feel guilty about without adding anything unnecessary to the list.

Logan's breath is hot on the back of his neck as his hand strokes up and down, up and down, slow and lazy and so absolutely delicious that Duncan would willingly admit right now that he missed this more than he wanted the normal Veronica he's been walking on eggshells for. He catches Logan's wrist, registering the instant uncertainty rolling off Logan, and turns slightly, nudging Logan toward the middle of the bed. (He doubts he'd ever live down managing to fall off the bed in the middle of sex.)

His brain is short-circuited by his cock at the moment, and it takes a few seconds to realize that Logan thinks Duncan was pushing him away. "Wait," Duncan reaches out and drags Logan closer, and he's not sure if he actually said that out loud or just thought it, but it doesn't really matter when Logan's mouth lands on his and Logan's hands are on him again and _fuck_\--

He'd deliberately forgotten how good this has always been with them.

He'll regret remembering it later.

**III.**   
_I’d rather dull the pain  
than stand out in the rain.  
That seems to be  
the undercurrent of my insanity.  
\-- "Virus" by Sarah Fimm_

  
Veronica's not sure how she feels when Lilly fails to show up for three weeks straight.

She _should_ be thrilled. Seeing ghosts, especially bratty, annoying, _pushy_ ghosts with unnatural menage a trois fixations, is not normal. And even if Lilly's not really a ghost, even if Lilly's just some part of her subconscious that's telling her what she doesn't want to hear, well, that doesn't make her much saner, does it?

She takes her first case in five months. Hey, needing money for college is normal.

Julie's money would've been better spent on a therapist, she's sure, but that's not her problem.

There are more cases after that. Run of the mill background checks, the odd surveillance assignment, and she's down to one weekly four-hour shift at the Hut. She should quit, she knows, but playing hostess once a week helps her play normal the rest of the time. (And that's how she's starting to think of it, as _playing_.)

Funny thing is, she misses being the freak outsider more than she ever missed normal.

Maybe that's why, when confronted with the sight of her ex-boyfriend sucking off her current boyfriend, she doesn't cry or scream accusations at them; she can only laugh helplessly at the idea Lilly's going to get her way again, and she's laughing and laughing and laughing until she's crying as she sinks down to the floor.

Duncan's at her side in an instant, stroking her hair, murmuring softly in that normal, reassuring, boyfriend-Duncan voice, and Logan's hovering hesitantly near the bed as he struggles to get his pants back on, and Lilly finally shows up for the first time in three weeks with a smirk. "Come on, Veronica Mars, I can't do _everything_ for you."

At Lilly's conspiratorial look, she thinks _oh, fuck normal_ to herself and turns her head. Duncan's lips barely whisper over hers, like he's afraid if he kisses her too hard, she'll run away, and she pulls back, looks at him and says, "No, like when you're mad."

He just stares at her for a few seconds, utterly confused, and she launches herself at him, bruising her own lips against his. He finally seems to realize she's serious, and she wants him _angry_, and now she's pretty sure she's going to have hand-shaped bruises on her waist and her hips come tomorrow. (Maybe by the end of the night, she'll have bruises in some more interesting places, too.)

She likes that idea.

"Well, don't let me interrupt or anything," Logan snipes from the bedroom, and she breaks away from Duncan's mouth as she moves her hips in little circles, grinding against him with little whimpers that have him groaning as he tears her shirt open, and Lilly's raising an eyebrow in the corner of the room, daring Veronica to actually go through with it.

Veronica favors him with Lilly's evil smirk and says as innocently as she possibly can, "We won't."

And she could tell herself this isn't even a little bit about him fucking Kendall Casablancas, but she'd be lying. And lying wouldn't be _normal_, would it now?

(How crazy is it to be taunting _herself_ about her own normal complex?)

Logan's eyes darken considerably and he shifts his gaze to Duncan.

"Stay," Duncan orders him, and she should be more surprised at the way Logan nods and collapses into one of the armchairs, gesturing overexaggeratedly toward the bed like he gestured to the Porsche he rented for Lilly's birthday--

_"Your chariot awaits, m'lady."_

_"My chariot doesn't have a backseat? Guess we'll just have to work around the... stick."_

_"God, Lilly, I think you just ruined that whole childhood fairy tale thing for me."_

\--but Duncan's dragging her to her feet, pushing her to the bed, and the kaliedoscope of his hands roughly stroking over her and his mouth taking hers is too much, too good, too _right there_ and she can't focus on anything for more than a few seconds at a time.

Everything's sliding together, the weight of his body pressing her down into the bed, the feel of him against her, so hard, so good, and she doesn't remember when her clothes disappeared, but _yes Duncan, just like that, OH_\--

And she's turning her head, watching Logan twist the waistband of his unbuttoned pants between his fingers as Duncan kisses his way down her body until-- _god, good, sogoodsogood, don't stop_ \-- and Logan's knuckles are white on the side of the chair as her hips come up off the bed to meet Duncan's mouth, and _please please oh fuck yes yes_\-- she can't breathe, can't--

_Oh._

Why the hell didn't she listen to Lilly sooner?

  
*

  
There's a noise Veronica makes when he hurts her in just the right way.

Duncan knows it's horrible and wrong on a thousand different levels that he knows every possible way to force that noise out of her, that he's probably going to hell for ever discovering that noise in the first place, but at a moment like this, he's too focused on getting her there as many times as he can to care much about it.

And a moment like this? He honestly never thought things like this happened outside his personal fantasies and the expensive porn Logan is fond of collecting. Veronica always whimpers at the first thrust, a soft little sigh that's riding the border between pleasure and pain, and it reminds him of that (first) first time he shouldn't remember quite so clearly.

He should make himself forget how beautiful she was with her dress pushed up around her thighs, licking her pretty pink lips and urging him on in ways a sister never should. (But she's not his sister, so it's okay now.)

He makes this fast, rough, tells himself it's because she said she wanted it that way, tells himself it's _not at all_ because he's angry with her for reasons he shouldn't be. (It would be so unfair of him to resent her for wanting normal, after all the things he's done to her.) He shouldn't still be so angry with her beneath him, head fallen back as she gasps those hot little breaths that turn him on like nothing else, and he's a horrible, horrible person for still being able to come up with ten reasons off the top of his head to be pissed at her.

Of course, if he couldn't come up with those reasons, it would be sweet and tender like it always is, and she wouldn't be begging, "Duncan, please, more, _more_," sounding like she's going to die if he doesn't give her what she wants, and Logan wouldn't be sprawled in the armchair watching them like his own personal Spice channel, stroking himself slowly, a thousand times sexier than Duncan thinks he could ever be doing the same exact thing.

Duncan may be going to hell, but at least he's going to have the best fuck of his life first.

Veronica's raking her nails down his skin so hard that he's sure she's drawing blood, but fuck if that doesn't just make it hotter. And she's whimpering his name again, "Duncan, please, so close, please please please--" and he doesn't even think before he's moving her, putting her on her hands and knees so she's watching Logan too, and she's shaking and _oh FUCK_ there aren't words to describe that harsh, almost sobbing moan she makes when he slides in deeper.

She sounds like she's crying as he moves harder, faster, and Logan's rocking his hips up, breathing hard, matching Duncan's rhythm, watching Veronica's face as she throws her head back against Duncan's shoulder, breath catching as that first wave rolls through her. But it's Duncan he's giving that dark, intense stare when he finally groans, low and harsh, letting go and spilling over his own hand.

And it's knowing that both of them gave up control of this for him that gets Duncan there.

  
*

  
Of all the ways Logan fantasized himself as part of a menage a trois, sitting in the armchair jerking himself off while watching the only two people he has left wasn't at the top of the list.

At least, it wasn't until _now_.

"Are you coming to bed or do have plans to fuck Shelly Pomeroy's mother?" Veronica snipes as she curls herself around Duncan like a cat, and Duncan just raises an eyebrow at him. Logan just laughs at her like she's a petulant child and crawls into bed on the other side of Duncan, smirking at her as he kisses Duncan's neck.

He doesn't have to see Duncan's face to know he's rolling his eyes as he laughs. "Behave, children."

Veronica gives them both a smirk that would make Lilly proud. "Wouldn't it be more fun if we didn't?"

This is definitely going to top the rotation.


End file.
